The Phoeni­cian Scheme review – an absolute gas

Allow me to pro­pose a the­o­ry: The Phoeni­cian Scheme is the third part of what we shall loose­ly and unof­fi­cial­ly refer to as Wes Anderson’s ​‘Life of a Film­mak­er Tril­o­gy’. 2021’s The French Dis­patch was his unabashed ode to the mav­er­ick Amer­i­can journos and cul­ture writ­ers of the ​’50s and ​’60s, yet when tak­en in the longview it is also a film about that is fas­ci­nat­ed with the writ­ing process itself, par­tic­u­lar­ly how the human mind sculpts real­i­ty with the use of lit­er­ary and doc­u­men­tary tools. The film is about find­ing enter­tain­ment in the appar­ent­ly mun­dane, and Ander­son him­self could stand in for any of the scribes on show. Then in 2023 we got the meta-cin­e­mat­ic jew­el, Aster­oid City, a film that’s about direct­ing, but more specif­i­cal­ly, the process of drama­tis­ing, as in, how we trans­pose these fan­tas­tic texts into the visu­al medium.

The Phoeni­cian Scheme, then, shifts its focus a lit­tle ways away from the con­ven­tion­al artistry of writ­ing and direct­ing, and here we have a sto­ry about pro­duc­ing, and the peo­ple whose role it is on a film set to bring a plan togeth­er. It’s ques­tion­able whether Ander­son sees this tril­o­gy as being specif­i­cal­ly reflec­tive of his own per­son­al meth­ods, but these three films when tak­en in con­cert com­prise a top-to-tail dis­ser­ta­tion on the joys and the trau­mas of mak­ing movies. This project is in many ways his cin­e­mat­ic rejoin­der to Ben­jamin Britten’s ​‘The Young Person’s Guide to the Orches­tra,’ a clas­si­cal com­po­si­tion he employed so beau­ti­ful­ly in Moon­rise King­dom.

In this instance, there’s a sense that Ander­son feels that mak­ing a film is less an act of skill or knowhow more than it is an act of diplo­ma­cy and mak­ing sure you have the right peo­ple just on side enough to make the whole thing hap­pen. Beni­cio del Toro is intro­duced as a melan­choly arms deal­er named Zsa-zsa Kor­da, father to a small pha­lanx of inquis­i­tive young sons (whom he forces to live in a house across the street from his own cas­tle-like man­sion), and one daugh­ter, a can­tan­ker­ous and semi-estranged pipe-smok­ing nun named Sis­ter Leisl (Mia Threaple­ton). Due to his var­i­ous desta­bil­is­ing antics in the region, he has become the tar­get of mul­ti­ple (failed) assas­si­na­tion attempts, but like a cat who just burned through its eighth life, a moment of exis­ten­tial reflec­tion is now forced upon him.

Del Toro plays Zsa-zsa as a fear­less rogue who refus­es to dwell on a check­ered past. He sees no irony or good luck in his abil­i­ty to sur­vive, and deals with all aspects of life in a tone of high, almost grandiose seri­ous­ness. When he’s fly­ing his pri­vate jet and the hull starts to wob­ble, from tur­bu­lence per­haps or an incom­ing mis­sile, he will glance up from his lat­est doorstop read­ing mate­r­i­al (usu­al­ly a dry ento­mo­log­i­cal text­book), and assure his fel­low pas­sen­gers of his total lack of wor­ry. As with a film pro­duc­er, you reach a point in your career where you can’t allow your­self to be scared of such triv­i­al­i­ties as per­son­al antag­o­nism, finan­cial stress, phys­i­cal injury or death from above, and that’s Zsa-zsa to a tee.

The ​“scheme” of the title is Zsa-zsa’s high-falutin attempt at a lega­cy state­ment; he’s final­ly accept­ed his inevitable fate and wants Liesl to ben­e­fit from both his con­sid­er­able hold­ings and skim off a tidy per­cent­age of the var­i­ous civic util­i­ty projects he has planned to enhance Phoeni­cia. The fine detail of his elab­o­rate pro­pos­al is con­tained with­in a num­ber of neat­ly-stacked box­es, yet the real chal­lenge is to make sure all his var­i­ous com­rades are on side and with cheque­books at the ready. 

You have the Ivy League dandies Leland (Tom Han­ks) and Rea­gan (Bryan Cranston) who demand a lev­el of sport­ing prowess before they pony up for a tun­nel project. You have the fez-wear­ing night­club own­er Mar­seilles Bob (Matthieu Amal­ric) who requires a phys­i­cal bond of trust. There’s dodgy Amer­i­can sailor Mar­ty (Jef­frey Wright) who is inspired by earnest pas­sion. There’s Cousin Hil­da (Scar­lett Johans­son), who is will­ing to hand over her birthright for a big­ger stake in the Kor­da fam­i­ly. And final­ly, there’s Uncle Nubar (Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch), who looks like Orson Welles and refus­es to allow old per­son­al ten­sions to lie.

Also along for the ride is Michael Cera’s Bjorn, a bum­bling Nor­we­gian tutor who’s allowed to tag along to add an edu­ca­tion­al dimen­sion to this jol­ly jaunt and whose char­ac­ter feels inspired by Jer­ry Lewis’s The Nut­ty Pro­fes­sor. It feels like we’ve been wait­ing decades for Ander­son to cast Cera in a movie, and now it has final­ly hap­pened and it is a beau­ti­ful thing. Threaple­ton, mean­while, is able to hold her own on the dead­pan band­wag­on, nev­er once allow­ing the façade to drop as her pops and his cronies land her in ever more bizarre scrapes.

It goes with­out say­ing, but the film daz­zles with its trompe‑l’oeil-like world­build­ing, which inhab­its the fairy tale real­i­ty of Anderson’s mind with­out ever giv­ing over to the way­ward indul­gence of dream log­ic. As Zsa-zsa him­self has a give for get­ting peo­ple to ral­ly around his cause, so too does Ander­son have a rare knack for gath­er­ing up the cream of arti­san craftsper­sons and have them do his won­drous bidding.

In terms of its sto­ry, the notion of a pri­vate busi­ness­man who made his for­tune through weapons of war sud­den­ly embrac­ing the role of the great phil­an­thropist and sav­iour of social infra­struc­ture, is a curi­ous one. As Amer­i­ca in par­tic­u­lar is cur­rent­ly being asset-stripped by the real-life pre-cri­sis Zsa-zsas of the world, here we have a sce­nario which sug­gests that if the bil­lion­aire bros gained a mod­icum of per­spec­tive on the final­i­ty of exis­tence, maybe they wouldn’t be such awful and destruc­tive douche-noz­zles? In terms of Anderson’s saga, maybe it will be ongo­ing, and the next film will be about the chal­lenge of exhibit­ing these amaz­ing tales to the people.